Comparison between the cut French DVD by Metropolitan and the uncut German DVD by Splendid (FSK 16)

- 7 cuts
- Total cut length: 692,4 sec (= 11:32 min)

Several small mastering mistakes shorter than 0,5 sec will not be mentioned here.

Spiritual Kung-Fu is Lo Wei's 1978 attempt to make Jackie Chan famous by giving him a funny role in a comedy movie instead of his previous serious roles. Due to a ridiculous plot, stupid and quite often unnecessarily homophobic gags and embarassing "special effects" like fireworks supposedly being a meteor strike, his breakthrough was further delayed. Nowadays, this movie can only be recommended for die-hard Jackie fans and trash movie enthusiasts.

In France, only a version cut by almost 11,5 minutes (of talking) was available at first. One could not say that anything important was removed, but it was certainly unnecessary. This version could for example be found on the 3 disk set "Jackie Chan Digipack No. 1" with two others of his early movies, which were cut as well. The more recent French reissue, however, contains the uncut version, featuring the original audio track with subtitles. This release can be seen as one of the best for this movie. For this comparison, the also uncut German DVD was used as a comparison.

Running time designations are formatted like this
French DVD in PAL / German DVD in PAL

Logos / Credits

The French DVD shows the Metropolitan logo at first and then individual credits with a static background.

The German DVD shows the company logos of Fortune Star and the original logo of Lo Wei's production company.

German DVD 9,7 sec longer

00:37 / 00:47-01:08

Directly after that, the cut version lacks the first shots of the monastery and the monks that also include the title screen.

21,5 sec

The following shots only contain the opening credits in the German release.

11:05 / 11:37-12:41

The scene continues after Jackie was locked in. He unsuccessfully tries to persuade the guard to let him go again. Jackie then tries to talk to the meditating monks, also to no avail. Eventually he says that he will make up for the food he is not receiving during his imprisonment afterwards - which is the transition for the scene afterwards, in which he is capturing animals.

63,8 sec

12:15 / 13:51-14:49

Jackie and his stew can be seen earlier. He is talking about the ingredients, the virginhood of the chickens and the taste of worms is mentioned.

57,7 sec

15:23 / 17:56-18:48

The shot is longer, Jackie moans again. The others approach him and he tells them how much copying the book has hurt his hand. He is afraid he will be doing the task for the rest of his life because he has only managed to copy one page so far.

Eventually, he angriliy throws the book on the table, which would have been a good transition to the next scene also featuring a book on a table.

51,9 sec

26:10 / 29:36-36:34

After Jackie has thrown the ghosts down the stairs, a long and rather silly scene with the ghosts and the monks follow. At the end, Jackie can keep the ghosts in check and they introduce themselves.

Two of the monks go to their master, who is sitting around with a supposedly magic paper in front of his face. He thinks that he can only see the ghosts this way and tries to fight them but fails horribly. The ghosts only appear from time to time and do stuff like pulling his robe up.

The other guys then take the paper from the master and Dean Shek, as always in a stupid role, tells him that this paper only makes all people look like skeletons. The ghosts continue their attacks.

Jackie wakes up and slowly goes down the stairs. A monk is sniffing a ghosts butt because he has stuck the paper to it, this allows Jackie to grab the ghost. Suddenly, the ghosts become docile and introduce themselves and their fighting styles.

a total of 418,2 sec (= 6:58 min)

71:38 / 82:05-82:45

The blind monk can be seen longer. He asks why the baddies were able to learn the secret technique. James Tien then makes fun of the bad guards in the temple. The blind monk criticizes the abbot and Tien's friend is foulmouthing a bit more.

39,8 sec

77:31 / 88:38-89:18

The bad guys' boss talks longer and the blind monk says that he had already suspected there would be a traitor in the temple without knowing who exactly. The baddie then admits to have murdered Wai Cheng and says it was because he ahd started suspecting something.

39,4 sec

At the very end, the German DVD shows a text overlay on top of the frozen picture. The French version shows another text overlay similar to the opening credits instead. The German DVD then additionally also features another text overlay that can be seen quite long.